"Fixing" Stereotype Threat

I was always a huge proponent of standardized tests.  The SAT?  That was my jam.  The ACT?  Loved it.  At least, I did until I took the physics GRE for the first time and completely tanked it.  Looking back at how well I had done on standardized tests before, I couldn't reconcile the astonishing difference in my performance.  I didn't understand what had changed. 

Then I read Whistling Vivaldi and, as my advisor John Johnson likes to say, I saw the Matrix.  I understood what was happening: stereotype threat.

Stereotype threat is a phenomenon that causes people to under-perform in situations where they're faced with a task that's associated with a negative stereotype about a group that person is a part of.  That sentence may not have made the most sense, so I'll give some examples. 

• Some time ago, people got it into their heads that women aren't good at math and science. Now, when women are put in a situation where they need to do math or science, the pressure is on them to perform well so as not to confirm that negative stereotype. 
• Everyone's heard the joke that white people aren't as good at sports as black people.  Because of that, white people feel extra (unconscious) pressure when they're competing in sports.

There are a lot of really awful things wrapped up in this phenomenon.  The first, which brings in the concept of intersectionality, is that no one person belongs to just one group, and the intersections of their social groups mean they experience different threats at different times. 

• Asian women simultaneously deal with the stereotype that women are bad at math and that Asian people are good at it.  Studies have been done to show that performance in cases like this depend on which stereotype -- or which facet of their identities -- the women were reminded of before they took the test. 
• Black women have to deal with two negative stereotypes surrounding their ability to do math and science.  Those two negatives don't cancel each other out (like they do in math, which I know despite the fact that I'm a black woman); they add up. 

The second is that stereotype threat has the worst effect on people who care about how they perform.  It's not enough to just be part of a negatively stereotyped group. You have to really want to do well. This means that the people suffering the most from this phenomenon are the ones who are already disadvantaged, but who have the drive and the passion to overcome the obstacles in their way. 

It's a pretty shitty thing for our brains to do to us, but not as shitty as it is for humans to let the culture that established those negative stereotypes in the first place to continue to exist.

Like I said, I didn't do well on the physics GRE.  I'm not saying the sole reason for that was because I was dealing with the effects of stereotype threat.  I could have studied more, and it definitely would have helped if I had actually taken the physics classes that teach the material the test covers.  But if you read Whistling Vivaldi, you will see that stereotype threat really does have a significant effect on test scores.

I'm planning on taking the GRE again in the fall, and I wanted to know if my awareness of stereotype threat would alleviate some of its effects.  Whistling Vivaldi didn't have any chapters on that.  I talked with my advisor about my questions and he pointed me in the direction of value affirmation.

Studies have shown  that asking people to list and talk about the things they value most about themselves can actually combat the effects of stereotype threat!  More than that, students who were explicitly reminded of a negative stereotype that applied to them (so, students who would be harmed the most by stereotype threat) scored just as high as the students in the group who faced no negative stereotype at all. 

Of course, now I'm left to wonder if my knowing about the positive effects of value affirmation will undo those effects altogether, but that's another blog post for another time.

I'm still struggling to let go of the idea that standardized tests are good tools for weeding out students.  Hell, I'm struggling to let go of the idea that we need to "weed out" students.  But at least I know that these are ideas I should consider letting go.  Now, if only we could get all of the old white men upholding the institution of The Standardized Test to fail one, maybe they'd see the Matrix, too.